


Hemlock

by Heligoland



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Attraction, F/F, No Sex, Protectiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-26
Updated: 2012-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-22 11:51:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/609529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heligoland/pseuds/Heligoland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following 2x14 Fires of Idirsholas. Even hemlock could not bear to kill its own. Morgana has grown among the worse sort of weeds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hemlock

The hemlock sprouts as the sun rises between the south sarsens, or so insist the migrating crows returning north from the henge. The chaste poison rises, white and dewed, threefold, unpeeling until a soft ivory bulb emerges to show its face to the sun, drinking it insatiably. Its eyelashes grow slowly, eyebrows following, and soft, dark fuzz begins to form along its crown. It does not stir.

Morgause rings round it daily, offering pinches of raw meat to new, toothed bulbs, observing any wilt of the leaves, whispering a raincloud into being, if needed, and dragging her stave through the soil, circling again to pour a sunshine-bubbled brew into the groove.

The face blooms further, into a full head, tilts back on the emerging neck to aim milky, dark lashed eyelids towards the sun, making them glow the hint of brown they hold. New leaves spring round the pale form, working leisurely out of the mud. The rain rinses skin and leaf clean, and what is left is fresh and new and female, twisted up into the verdure.

The hemlock kills and births Morgana. Their lives are one, in a sense, or at least will be, until full bloom. This is the only cure that Morgause knows, for even hemlock could not bear to kill its own. It would do anything for its progeny, even develop a taste for flesh, even suck its precious soil clean, for the crucial nutrients.

Morgause cannot look at Morgana for more than a moment, there locked, sheltered in the thicket, at the faint tilt of her dormant face, at the nonexistent curiosity suspended there, at her soft, exposed body pulling free of the earth by inches. The sun guides the leaves, guides her limbs into the pose most exposed, most open to the stray beams that filter through the trees far above. The hemlock thinks Morgana needs light to live, for what on this earth could not?

She is exquisite, and Morgause will grow her prudently. But she cannot think to gape in awe. No matter how precious Morgana is to her. No matter how long Morgause has dwelt without blood or warmth or touch. Without _human_ beauty, and that… is the most precious.

But Morgause could not stand to think of yet another failing Morgana in the charge of warden, of kith and kin. Morgana has had all these, warden kith kin, since the death of her father, but never in a form untwisted—she was eyed like venison, handled like porcelain: never touched, but always spied upon. Ever the end of the sentence, or passive at its head. Words the only power held.

And yet bizarrely alone, in every exchange of them.

Morgause’ eyes do not seek her out in the bramble; instead she whispers sibilances, bringing forth new umbrage for her sister’s nakedness.

 

Morgana finally rouses to the squawk of crows. They are celebratory as they pass back to warmer climes. Morgana blooms latest in the season, and brightest, showered in flickers of autumn’s last sigh. The leaves shrivel away and die at the ripened girl’s feet.

She breathes, once, her eyes flickering open in what seems a perpetual afternoon. Then she gives a horrified look and kicks out of what is left of her sheathe, scrambling away.

Morgause lowers her eyes and holds forth a simple white gown.


End file.
